91 comments:

You have brainwashed your daughters into believing they are liberated by wearing revealing clothes, yet in reality all they have liberated is your sexual desire.

That's a curious statement that eludes easy interpretation.

Interesting, isn't it, that feminism has simultaneously unleashed the demand that women should be able to walk in public dressed like whores, and the demand that rape be constantly reinterpreted to excuse women for any responsibility for their actions or their attire?

The mistake in reading this is assuming that OBL thinks that Western women are people. They aren't. They are objects of both scorn and desire at the same time. Unlike Muslim women, who can be taught their places and bear sons for Jihad, Western women are the servants of Shaitan.

The interrogation leveraged his sensitivities as a Muslim: he was shown pictures of scantily clad models, was touched by a female interrogator, was made to stand naked, and was forcibly shaved. He was denied the right to pray. ....

It seems just a little too convenient. And it seems fishy that government "officials" (note the plural) would speak "on condition of anonymity about classified material". Isn't the disclosure of classified information a crime?

This story of a "treasure trove" of pornography could just be a CIA invention, provided to the media in furtherance of America's interests. Americans can't see bin Laden's computer files for themselves, but they'll believe the narrative because they naively trust their government and because the story of America's #1 enemy being a hypocrite is inherently appealing.

If I were in the CIA, I would put out this story, true or not, because people will believe it and it will likely damage the public image of Al-Qaeda, especially among puritanical Muslims. Wouldn't you?

If you think pornography degrades women, you should see what marriage to Obama does to them. Parents of porn stars can take comfort that at least their children are not married to Obama....My bet is that Charlie Sheen has much better taste in porn than Obama. However, we will not know definitely until the CIA reveals the contents of Obama's stash. Would it be a good or bad thing for her career if it turned out he was also infatuated with Bree Olson?

Another point: there seems to be a very, very organized drip of information coming out -- tremendously soon after Bin Laden's reported death. Tremendously, tremendously soon when you consider the alleged volume of information.

It's far more likely that American intelligence operatives had a disinformation campaign ready and waiting for the right time, and they are rolling it out full throttle now along with legitimate information.

I have to imagine that Obama -- who has never really been particularly adept at anything except Democratic caucuses -- will linger over and savor this moment entirely too long, until it becomes first a joke among conservatives and then, eventually, a national joke.

Perhaps this will help the MSM stop romanticizing the purity of Muslim men.

You are right that it isn't all of the West, but I also don't think it's only the MSM. There are people who got very swept up in the outrage on behalf of Muslims over the Koran burning. In that debate, there was at least one commenter here at Althouse stating that Muslim men only sleep with their wives.There does seem to me to be a large swath of people who believe that Muslim men's beliefs are so much more pure and actualized than men of other religions.

There does seem to me to be a large swath of people who believe that Muslim men's beliefs are so much more pure and actualized than men of other religions.

You have the sentiment entirely wrong. It's not about Muslims. It's about the idea of the self-proclaimed intellectual who knows what's best for society and who is brave enough to take political action. What with communism laughable and gone, there's a real void.

The asceticism of living in caves and shit. The cleansing violence. The proclamations that people must live in certain ways. Hardcore leftists eat that shit up.

"You plaster your naked daughters across billboards in order to sell a product without any shame. You have brainwashed your daughters into believing they are liberated by wearing revealing clothes, yet in reality all they have liberated is your sexual desire."

He has a point, but in only in the stopped clock sense.

The Sexual Revolution freed a lot of young women into the glorious future of unwed motherhood and perpetual dependence on government. They're one of the Demos' most reliable constituencies.

OTOH, I've read in a couple of places that you can tell a lot about somebody by his taste in porn - white or interracial goat.

Julius said...

It seems just a little too convenient. And it seems fishy that government "officials" (note the plural) would speak "on condition of anonymity about classified material". Isn't the disclosure of classified information a crime?

Hate to agree with Julie on anything, but I saw on one of the military-themed blogs, Mudville, I believe, that nothing classified is getting out.

Bin Laden does have good taste in movies, at least. Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah Does Abbottabad (one of his wives starred in that one. Pretty low budget). 1,000 Hung Arabian Knights. That's a good one. Submission is a recurring theme, which may explain his devotion to Islam.

Is there really any question that the Bin Laden story is exactly like the Jesus story? A young, wealthy, stateless man representing a religion and upset about the politics in the region where he grew up.

The difference is that the Jesus story had (or came to have) a meaningful, powerful message. Bin Laden was a confused nihilist of the worst wort.

@Maybee, purity of Muslim men has never entered my mind. Surely women must be covered and kept separate because Sharia Law recognizes that their men are, in their core, violent rapists who cannot control their animal natures - and, apparently, are not expected to. How else to justify the exclusion of women from public life?

In mainstream Islamic though--you know, the kind bin Laden followed--being a Muslim guarantees paradise. If you are a bad Muslim, you go to purgatory, but are guaranteed salvation. There is no sin that can send a Muslim to hell, except apostasy.

So, you see Muslims drinking, watching pornography, avoiding taxes, and so on, without fear of eternal hellfire. Hellfire belongs to the infidels.

One time a well-known crossword constructor, Frank Longo, was testing out a few clues in a NYT-hosted forum. He asked us what we thought of the clue "Plugs along the highway" for a nine letter solve. I guessed "billboard" but nobody else in the forum could make the connection even when it was given to them which is why I am the hero of this anecdote.

@Christy-and, apparently, are not expected to. How else to justify the exclusion of women from public life?

But they do it for such pure, religious reasons! They are living the lives their religion requires of them- unlike ever-hypocritical Christians who talk about loving Jesus but sometimes have affairs and stuff.

Jesus was obviously wealthy. His parents were on a tax-related trip when he was born. He traveled extensively during his ministry. Who paid for that -- the camels, the water, the food, the lodging? He spoke to large crowds. Who organized the crowds -- how did they know He was going to speak? Jesus was the spawn of a royal line. How many such people are poor?

Anyone who can make reasonable inferences understands that Jesus was wealthy.

Also, Jesus' (step?) father and Bin Laden's father were big in the Middle East construction business.

But, Robert Cook, fuck! Tell us: under what law will any court try American politicians for war crimes?

Jesus was obviously wealthy. His parents were on a tax-related trip when he was born. He traveled extensively during his ministry. Who paid for that -- the camels, the water, the food, the lodging? He spoke to large crowds. Who organized the crowds -- how did they know He was going to speak? Jesus was the spawn of a royal line. How many such people are poor?

I broadly agree, except for the part about Jesus being of a Royal line. In first-century Palestine, the easiest way for a Jew to be wealthy was through commerce.

On edit: maybe people don't realize that they are seeing Jesus in Bin Laden, and don't also realize how wedded they are to Jesus as a savior figure. They don't like Jesus. They don't like Bin Laden. And yet they do like both for subsumed reasons...

We're looking at this from a modern perspective about the value of people.

Bin Laden was looking at it from the perspective of a time when the nature and value of a woman changed if she were impure. It's not hypocrisy for Bin Laden to simultaneously condemn us for not protecting our daughters while enjoying, himself, looking at fallen women. It's two entirely different things.

This gets into the "you're a whore, therefore you're available to *me*" thing mentioned in relationship to the Peace Corps women being raped, and any number of reports of, oh, rape proof belts being sold in Norway by an enterprising young woman.

We don't see women that way, that a raped girl is now "ruined" or any such stupidity. Certainly the people who recognize that we've done women no favors by promoting the odd notion that liberation and strength is gained by making ones self a sexual object are not viewing women as one sort of creature for noble purposes while "pure" and another sort of creature for other purposes forever after. Which is what Bin Laden certainly was doing.

It's the theory of magic virginity that sees even a rape victim as fundamentally changed and fundamentally guilty of her own ruin.

It's not even that long ago in our culture that girls came in two categories... the ones you f*cked and the ones you married.

We think that Bin Laden is shown to be a hypocrite because he doesn't feel the least responsibility to treat all women like the sort you marry. This is a western, modern, and probably (if I dare say it) Christian sensibility. I doubt it will go far among his supporters, no matter that we can hope that it soils him. I doubt that it will.

"We think that Bin Laden is shown to be a hypocrite [...] This is a western, modern, and probably (if I dare say it) Christian sensibility. I doubt it will go far among his supporters, no matter that we can hope that it soils him. I doubt that it will."

That's a good point, too. This is Western propaganda, by Westerners, for Westerners.

Anyone who can make reasonable inferences understands that Jesus was wealthy.

Do you remember the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Indy, Donovan the Nazi, and the side-switching chic Elsa are deep in the cave with a thousand-year-old knight. They're forced to choose among different versions of the Holy Grail, representing the different images we have of Jesus. Elsa selects a gilded cup encrusted with jewels for Donovan, but after drinking from it he disintegrates in a most horrible way. Indy-- smart American hero that he is-- knows that the true Grail will be one of a humble carpenter instead of a wealthy king. So he selects the most austere-looking one and the old knight confirms that he has chosen wisely.

The moral? Only an egotistical Nazi would accept the belief that Jesus was a rich man. True-blooded Americans know otherwise.

Asked about the contents in an interview with Bloomberg Television, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said, “I’m not sure we have any plot” that the intelligence review had found.

Well that proves the porn was for use by bin Laden and not any of his wives. Doesn't take a big shot CIA intelligence analyst to figure it out. Eeveryone knows the ladies are only interested in porn movies that have plot.

I don't have an ox in danger of being gored in this Jesus this or that thing... However, intelligent conversation has rules. Jesus of Nazareth, Lord Christ, Son of Man, whatever is at very least the central character of several works of ancient literature of world-historic importance. Ergo when theorizing about the character one must respect the sources, which all agree he was not anything other than ordinary in terms of material wealth.

OBL and JC -- two Middle Eastern guys obsessed with religious matters. Yeah, that's one hell of an insightful comparison. How many permutations of Jesus coupled with a Middle Eastern guy obsessed with religious matters could there be given the 2000 year span involved. It's got to exceed the 9th order of magnitude.

Is there really any question that the Bin Laden story is exactly like the Jesus story?

Why, yes. Yes there is.

Unless you mean the sense that the Obama story is in every sense identical to the Hitler story (middle aged man of mixed racial ancestry comes to power in nation with strong and unresolved feelings about same, riding wave of adulation from supporters; deteriorating relations with Great Britain ensue).

Have any of you seen the real homoerotic pictures of the Taliban? It was fucking weird.

I did see the real documentary Afghan Muscles though and it was fucking hot. They would all take their shirts off for each other and clap and walk around and look at their shape and touch them. I totally blew a load after watching it.

(Seriously, porn and Rock and Roll brought down the communists. Maybe they can do the same for Islam. If a third of the men have 100% of the women due to polygamy then the other two thirds need a better release than blowing themselves up in public.)

Ann if you believe this then I have a bridge to sell you.This gov't has been spreading disinformation about OBL from day he died. They are trying to change the perception of him and this fits right within their plan.Please do not believe these lies.I do not like OBL and am happy he is dead but please ANN stop believing these lies

Why does a now dead sub-human new resident of hell care about our daughters when he came from a culture that subjugated theirs as nothing more than property? So Islamic purity allowed his collection of nudie mags or was it just for the articles?

Then...how would those Muslim terrorists in Florida know which strip joints to visit?

But, seriously, Muslim guys aren't comfortable around women in public and especially intimate settings...as it's simply not the way things are done in the Muslim world (the mosque is segregated, and they are barred from much of public life...hence the camel beauty contests and perhaps a lot of the violence).

On that note, for Americans, how do you feel about single motherhood planned parenting, no-fault divorce, the women's front of Judea (NOW)...the seeming lack of moral expectations in those new roundsof change..and what that means for politics and the public square?

I'd better get off of here before some Lefty makes the Muslim/Christianity false equivalence charge